Cold Easters

For my daughter’s kindergarten egg hunt in Alaska, the group dressed from head to toe in fur-lined parkas, snow pants and mukluks (native boots).

My five daughters were raised in the frozen bush of Alaska where I was a teacher for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in isolated villages. Easter, however late in the spring, was always cold. When they were preschoolers, we hid a precious few dyed eggs that we ordered airfreight at great expense. So most of the hidden treasures were the candy variety placed on bookshelves, behind chair legs and in houseplants around our quarters.

My youngest daughter remembers her kindergarten Easter egg hunt where a variety of bright candy eggs, large and small, were hidden in the crannies of ice chunks and snowdrifts along the edge of the hard-packed, icy dirt village landing strip. But their enthusiasm was equal to my own memories as they found eggs and filled their homemade construction paper basket.